The original plant of this new variety was a member of a family of over 2000 pear seedlings which germinated from seeds obtained from the Canadian Department of Agriculture Research Unit located near Summerland, British Columbia, Canada. This seed, collected from open-pollinated Old Home pear trees (Pyrus communis) which were growing in an isolated experimental planting with Farmingdale pollinizers, was planted by the inventor in his nursery at Forest Grove, Oreg. in 1952.
Experimental objectives were to develop, by trial and selection, a series of clonal pear rootstocks which would fulfill several urgent needs of the orchardist and the nurserymen. The most important and immediate needs were for rootstocks that are resistant to Fireblight (Erwina amylovora) a common, debilitating bacterial disease of pear trees. Also needed were rootstocks that are tolerant of the more recently described and equally destructive disease of pear known as Pear Decline (Moria). Pear Decline is a mycoplasma-caused disease which plugs pear phloem sieve tubes below the graft union causing decline and death of trees. This is particularly true if pear trees are propagated on non-tolerant seedling rootstocks. Most rootstocks used for pear tree propagation today are considered susceptible to this virus-like disease.
Another objective of this work was to select from the seedling population, rootstock clones which would root readily in a nursery by cutting and/or by other negative means.
An additional objective was to select from this seedling population a series of growth-controlling rootstock clones which could be made available to nurserymen and growers and which would permit them to develop orchards using tree spacing techniques tailored to known uniform tree sizes. This objective can be accomplished only through the use of clonally propagated rootstocks.
All of these qualities are lacking in the seedling rootstocks currently being used by most nurserymen in the trade today. Old Home.times.Farmingdale No. 87 has shown its usefulness by exhibiting the following characteristics which fulfill all of the original desired objectives and in addition has shown itself to be particularly well adapted to the climatic and soil characteristics of Northern pear growing districts in Canada. It has been chosen to fill these needs following over 30 years of orchard and nursery testing and evaluation.
Final selection was made in 1985 following tests which consisted of trial plantings and nursery evaluations which were carried out at Summerland, British Columbia; Harrow, Ontario; Kentville, Nova Scotia; Yakima, Wash.; Geneva, N.Y.; and Hood River, Salem, Medford, Corvallis, Dayton and Forest Grove, Oreg.